Inaccessibility

It’s about inaccessibility. Not that your music can’t be easily obtained, but that you produce product that can’t easily be reproduced. Be it your live show, your technicality, or your obscurity, you need something that people can’t reproduce.

Once the masses can reproduce what you do, you can bet that someone can and will do it better. At that point, you’re expendable. Try to generate hype for something that’s expendable. It’s a tough sell. High school bands rarely make it. They’re expendable.

You need something unique. As far as a performance goes, Lady Gaga has something that you can’t match. That’s how she’s surviving; obscurity. With her music, I’d listen to my friend, Natalie Ness, do Gaga covers any day of the week over Gaga herself. If Lady Gaga didn’t have the shock factor – something unique – what would keep her from dying out? Nothing. She would be passed by.

Which is where most of today’s music lies. It has no intrinsic value or sustainability. It has celebrity-fashioned hype with no means of being unique. Yet so many still want to be on the radio and to fill the tabloids? The only future in that is a quick shot at fame followed by the long sobering journey back to being mortal.

The future of sustainable music is inaccessibility. Today is not a day to want to be on the radio if you want any remnants of your work around years down the road. 50 years from now, I won’t be listening to Justin Bieber. He's big because he's young and has a good voice. Once he's done being young, he'll just be another nice voice. Justin Bieber will be dead. However, I will still be listening to Mr. Bungle. They’ve long since passed already, but none come close to emulating what they do. They’ll be smaller cult followings, but with as much music as is being released in today’s age, your best bet is with a cult following. The masses will move on. They always do anymore. It will be people who know that you’ve got something inaccessible who will carry your name.

Likewise, 50 years from now, people will still be listening to Trace Bundy. At the very least, I will. He’s technicality that is unmatched. People still listen to and study Django Reinhardt, over 50 years after his death for the same reasons. You haven’t heard of him, but that’s because you probably don’t care enough to dig that deep. His music is studied because it has a level of inaccessibility that keeps the novice away and fascinates those willing to look. Do what he did with as few fingers as he had. Go ahead and try. You’ll be drawn in too, because it’s something no one else can offer (so few, in fact, that I can only find good clips of covers where people are using all of their fingers... Imagine this guy playing this song with only 2 fingers on his left hand.)

 So many are looking for their “big break” and Hollywood fame. Have something unique that other's can't do and you're untouchable. Do something like put a kalimba on your  guitar ...and then play the guitar and the kalimba simultaneously ...really well.

The outlet won't have to be crazy percussive fingerstyle/kalimba hybrid stuff. But it will have to be as inaccessible and hard to reproduce. That's what it will take.